The best dropout
prevention is for students to focus on their own story, their own future. The School Archive
Project does that with a 10-year time-capsule and class-reunion plan designed to
provide students one record of their story combined with a physical connection to
their future. The goal is to help
students visualize their story and better understand their natural ability to make the differences they want
in their own lives through work.

The first School Archive
was a 350-pound vault, bolted to the floor of the Quintanilla Middle School
lobby in the Oak Cliff area of Dallas in 2005. The Archive has 10 shelves to hold letters from 8th grade
classes until their 10-year class reunion. Students write these letters to
themselves before leaving the 8th grade. The letter is about their achievements
and stories from their life. It will document their efforts toward personal
growth and their goals. (Starting in 2010, parents, and/or other significant
adults in a child's life, are also invited to write the child a letter about
their dreams for the child. The child then reads this letter and seals it, with
their own finished letter, into a self-addressed
envelope.) The students then pose for a photo with their Language Arts Class in front of the
School Archive
holding their letters. After the photo they each place their envelope
into the Archive themselves.

Students receive a copy of
this group photo with information on the back about their planned 10-year reunion.
They know they will retrieve their letter at the reunion and be
invited to give a "10 years of Wisdom Talk" to the then current 8th grade students.
They are warned to prepare for questions from these 10-year
younger students such as: "What would you do differently if you were 13
again?"

With a School Archive Project teachers may give students
a new message as they leave for high school: "See you in 10 years!"
That simple message is changing students vision of themselves and their future.
It is reinforcing positive student/teacher relationships and establishing a
meeting time in the future many are looking forward to. Self-images and plans
for the future are evolving more positively, and more often include school.

December 2009 Progress Report:

From 2005/2006 to 2009/2010 the 11th and 12th grade enrollments at all 32 high schools in DISD
went up over 5% for a total increase of 758 students. This was during a time
when total district enrollment went down over 2%. Only 2 of the 32 DISD high
schools account for 417 of these students or 55% of the increase: Pinkston and
Sunset high schools. These are the two high schools who have received
almost all of the Middle School Archive
Project students!

This growth in 11th and 12th grade
enrollment at these two schools points to the value of focusing students onto
their own futures, and a future middle school class reunion. The second class to write School Archive
Project letters was in the 8th grade in 2005/06. Since then, even though DISD
total enrollment went down 2.5%, the number of
students in the 11th and 12th grades combined for all of DISD has gone up by 758
students, a 5% increase. That indicates that more students are staying in
school. (Go to
www.studentmotivation.org/dallasisd/ to see the spreadsheet with these. A
copy in Excel format can also be downloaded.) Most of this increase, 55%,
happened at two high schools representing 9% of all DISD enrollment, and receiving
almost all School Archive Project students:
Pinkston and Sunset high schools. At Pinkston, with less than 3% of DISD high
school students, their gain of 96 students in the 11th and 12th grades accounted
for 12.7% of all the gain for DISD. (During this time the total Pinkston
enrollment dropped by 3.7%. This upper grade growth was not due to school
expansion.) Sunset, with 6% of DISD high school
students, accounted for a gain of 321 students, or 42.3% of all the gain for
DISD. (During this time Sunset enrollment grew by 11.8%. Most of that
growth came from this increase in upper grade enrollment. If only all DISD
schools had such growing problems!)

Due to the popularity of this project
among students, the positive effect on motivation, and the fact that both
Pinkston and Sunset had the largest graduation classes in years with the Class
of 2009, four more DISD schools
started School Archive Projects the summer of 2009: Greiner Middle School, Brown
Middle
School, Sunset High School, and Macon Elementary School. They all took
advantage of a fund that had been established at the
Dallas Education
Foundation to provide $1,500 grants to cover the purchase and installation
of a 500 pound vault in their school lobby, as well as other initial expenses.
The School Archive Project is reaching more students, and showing results!

October 2008 Progress
Report: (Note: Dallas ISD was
reported in
April 2008 to have the 7th highest dropout rate of any urban school district
in the
US. All 6 cities with higher dropout rates than Dallas in this study were smaller cities
with under a million population. In June 2008 the FBI also reported Dallas to have
the highest crime rate in the US.)

1)
An over 26% reduction in the dropout rate between the 9th and 10th grade has been
achieved since 2005 at the two high schools receiving
most Archive Project students. It is based on current enrollment numbers as of the
end of September, 2008.

Most dropouts never enroll in the 10th grade. In Dallas ISD an
average of 36% of 9th graders do not make it to the 10th grade.

The two high schools attended by most Archive Project students
are Pinkston High School and Sunset High School. They are
two of the higher dropout rate high schools in Dallas ISD. Their percentage of 9th graders
not enrolling in the 10th grade had averaged
only 39.1% for the four years before the Archive Project started. In the four
years since 2005, the percentage of 9th graders not making it to enroll in the 10th
grade has gone down over 26%! It went from 39.1% for the four years before 2005-2006 to
28.1% for the
2008-2009 school year. You can see that reflected in the
bar chart to the left in terms of those making to the 10th grade.

(An Excel format copy of the spreadsheet
these calculations are drawn from for Pinkston and Sunset is
linked here
to allow the numbers to be manipulated and more easily verified.)

Sunset and Pinkston used
to be two of the nine highest dropout rate high schools in Dallas ISD. Of the 41 high schools in Dallas ISD, according the
Dropout Factory listing by
John
Hopkins University, for the graduation classes of 2004 through 2006 there were only 8 Dallas ISD high schools,
out of a total of 41, with dropout rates higher than Sunset, and only three with dropout rates higher than Pinkston.
If this lowering of
dropout rates continues, then Pinkston and Sunset will be among the Dallas ISD
schools with the highest graduation rates and lowest dropout rates by 2010!

If this improvement can be verified as
being affected by, or resulting mostly due to that percentage of students
who are from Quintanilla, then we have more evidence that the Archive Project
is
having a even more positive effect on the lowering of the dropout rate.

Ninth grade enrollments are normally inflated in most Texas high schools due to
retention and students stuck in the 9th grade, taking 9th grade two or more times. (See the
11
year Texas enrollment chart and the 11 year
Dallas ISD enrollment chart for illustration.) This factor, combined
with the dropout rate, leads to a significant enrollment number decrease from
9th to 10th grade. From 1998 to 2008 an average of 18.3% of 9th graders
in Texas did not make this promotion with their class successfully to the 10th
grade. In Dallas
from 1998 to 2008 a total of 36% of Dallas ISD 9th graders failed to make this promotion
to the 10th grade with
their class successfully.

Something good is
definitely happening at Sunset and Pinkston! This improvement by two of the formerly worst dropout rate high schools in Dallas ISD,
now on their way to being among the best,
is progress to be celebrated, researched, and expanded.
(As this is written, staff at Sunset are considering a modification of the Archive Project so that
a similar project can be
started at Sunset High School. They would have a school archive installed for
letters written by seniors just before graduation. The focus on goals would
continue!)

In May 2007 a 15 question survey was filled out by 400 students before
and after the archive letter writing process. The goal was to
measure the effect of the archive letter writing process itself, as well as
secure general perceptions of the Archive Project. The results from this first
formal survey of students involved in the Archive Project verify that the Archive Project is very popular. It also
showed that, even though students had known of the writing of the Archive letter
for almost 2 years, the actual writing of the letter itself increased the percentage of students planning
both graduation and studies beyond high school by over 20%. The report on this
survey is
linked here. It gives details as to what the survey included and how
it was administered, with question by question results for each of the 15
questions answered by students both before and after the writing of their
letters for the Archive.

The Achievement & Goals Archive "lounge" (above) at Quintanilla Middle
School,
is
located
between the stairs going up to the 8th grade floor.

This
project was started
at Quintanilla Middle School, an inner-city public school in Dallas Texas
serving 1100 students in the 7th and 8th grade. The
originalproposal was
written, presented to school staff and PTA, and
approved in March of 2005. It was funded the next month by the local Lowe's Home
Improvement Center.

Achievement & Goals Archive

This safe contains letters written by
Quintanilla 8th graders to themselves about their lives,
achievements, and goals. They will return to open these letters in ten
years. On their return these alumni will be invited to speak with the then
current students of the most valuable lessons they took from Quintanilla.

Above is
the wording and photo from the sign hanging inside the Plexiglas door of the Archive.

The original Middle School Archive Project involved a large vault bolted to the concrete floor inside a closet with
a locked, clear Plexiglas door. It is secured under spotlights in a central location of the school
passed over 4 times each school day by all students. It is called the
Achievement &
Goals Archive. The four vaults installed in
other schools since 2005 have not been placed into a closet but are in the open
allowing students to better understand what they are. Every student is
introduced to the vault when they enter as new students. They know
that before they graduate from the 8th grade they will be allowed, but not
required, to write
a letter to themselves to be added to the letters already stored in the vault
from previous graduating classes. Their letters will be available to them
the week of Thanksgiving the 10th year after their graduation from middle
school. When they return to pick up their letters they will also be
invited to share their recommendations with students in the school at that time,
giving their "10 years of wisdom talk." Would they do anything differently if
they were 13 again?

The letter 8th grade students write may become a valued family history document.
It should be a snapshot of their lives to date, a part of their written history.
It will include stories about them and their friends, family,
neighborhood, and school, as well as anything else from the history of their
lives to date. It will help to document their efforts and work toward
personal growth. They will then also write about their goals for the future.
The letter should be limited to 4 sheets of paper, front and back if needed.
It must fit inside a normal business size envelope. They are to address the
envelope to themselves either at their current home address, or, if no family
members may be at that address in 10 years, in care of a relative or friend,
someone who will probably still be at their same address in 10 years.

Nobody can promise
a student that they will be the ones
who open their letter in 10 years. Alumni no longer able to
receive mail through the old address they had placed on the envelope will need
to contact the school before November of that 10th year so they can be invited
to the opening of the Archive for their letter. If they do not provide a
corrected address before that May then the letter they addressed 10 years before will
be mailed to a bad address and potentially lost. There are also accidents in life. Two Quintanilla
students died tragically the summer and fall of 2005, one in a drowning accident
during the summer and another in an automobile accident that fall. Such realities of
life must be spoken of before students write their letters. In a situation when
a student dies this letter may become an especially valuable family possession for
a grieving family. Students must know this letter may become a treasured part of
their written family history. Most probably they will share it someday with their
spouse, children, and grandchildren.

The "Ten Years of Wisdom Talk" mentoring
component will start once alumni begin
returning the 10th year after their graduations to pick up their letters. In November of that 10th year notices will be mailed
to each of
the addresses on the envelopes addressed by the graduates from 10 years before.
The notice will welcome those graduates back to pick up their letters written
almost 10 years earlier. It will tell them the
date and time during Thanksgiving week of the opening of the Achievement &
Goals Archive for their letters. At this
reunion they will be given their letters and asked to share with the current students any
wisdom they have gained of life during those
10 years. Thinking of giving this "10 years of wisdom talk" may also encourage and direct
alumni as the years
pass leading toward their return. This talk is planned for November so
that the then current 8th grade students will have more to consider during the 6 months before
they write their own letters for the Achievement & Goals Archive in May.
"How can I best plan for my own personal growth?"

The archived letters will be mailed by the 10th
anniversary of their writing to all students who have not been able to come to
Quintanilla to pick up their letters between Thanksgiving and May. The letters will be mailed
in May to the
addresses placed on the envelopes 10 years earlier, or to corrected addresses
received. This will
allow for room to be made in the vault for the new letters
current Quintanilla 8th graders will write in May to continue the tradition.

The
letter writing process
can be personally difficult for students, as was found with the class of 2005, the first class to write such letters.
Most students were very excited by the process and wrote
at length of their history and future plans. One young student, a new single parent, was very upset at the
idea and cried at the very idea of writing such a letter. She was stuck in
a fixed mentality, not seeing the opportunities for her own growth and that of
her child. Her letter was
never written. Could that student's life have been different if this project,
reinforcing the potential for growth no matter what the situation, had
started years sooner? Hopefully that student, and the other students who chose
not to write letters, will still write letters for the
vault. They could certainly be some of the most proud alumni returning to their 10 year reunion.

Photographs given each student were a positive addition in 2006.
The students who had written letters for the Archive in their
Language Arts classes in 2006 posed with that teacher, their classmates, and their letter in front of the
Archive for photos. Then each student personally placed their letter on
shelf number 6 in the Archive for all 2006 letters. Large 4" x 6" copies of the group photos
taken were
then made and given to each student in the photo. On the back of each photo was
a large mailing label with the following wording:

This is your Language Arts Class on May 12, 2006
posing in front of the Achievements & Goals Archive at Quintanilla Middle
School, 2700 Remond Dr., Dallas, Texas 75211, phone 972-502-3200. A letter you
wrote to yourself is now inside the Archive. Sometime the fall of 2015 you will
be invited to the reopening of the Archive before Thanksgiving. Please call
Quintanilla if you have not heard from us by November of 2015, or if you want
to help with the reunion, or if you no longer can receive mail at the
address placed on your envelope in the Archive. We want you to be able to join
us for the opening of the Archive, and your class reunion.
If you cannot
attend the Thanksgiving, 2015, Reunion we still need a correct address so you will get your letter when it is mailed the
first week of May, 2016. May you prosper these next 10 years,
Your Quintanilla Family

These photos quickly became valued possessions. Students began
signing the back of each others photos as soon as they were given out. It was
obvious this was a memento they planned to keep. Several of that small minority
of students who had chosen not to write letters decided to
belatedly write letters for the archive even though they were too late for the
photo process. In 2007 almost all students wrote letters for the School
Archive. A tradition of class photos in front of the Archive was established.
Photos of classes in
front of the Archive with their letters are now seen in Language Arts Classrooms
and other locations of the school. All students know this is part of a
process they want to be involved in.

School counseling staff know such letter writing is a time for counseling
issues to surface. Counseling
staff are available during the letter writing so counseling issues may be
more effectively addressed. Throughout the year teachers and counselors can talk
of the letters students will be
writing for the Achievement & Goals Archive to help focus those students on their futures
and reinforce a growth mentality.
Encouraging preliminary drafts of materiel to eventually be placed into the
Archive Letter could be used by
counselors and teachers in many settings to help motivate students to plan for
their futures.

Liability Issues: Many students
invest multiple hours drafting and redrafting their letter for the Archive. It
is recommended students be encouraged to keep a copy of any letter they value.
In spite of the locked and secured vault, it is possible that letters can be
lost in many different ways. It also must be emphasized that letters may fall
into the hands of others who may not respect confidential information.
Thus, caution should be exercised in what is written.

Students may see the similarities between this project
and life. What they do and what they write is what will be there when
the Archive is opened in 10 years. What they achieve over the next 10
years is what they will bring with them to share with the then current students
when they return in 10 years. They control this project and nobody else. Their
efforts and their work can help them grow and change their world, and their children's world.

To be able to say "See you in 10 years" has the ability to
change relationships: between teachers and students, and among
students. A student's view of school, and the world, will certainly change
with such simple statements. (This item is being discussed at the page titled
"See you in 10 years!". Visit and add
your thoughts.)

The annual costs for a Middle School Archive Project
during the first 9 years of the project are estimated to be about $2 per
student. This would be the cost for the envelopes and paper required as
well as the photo and label given each student at the end of the year. It is
anticipated that the donation of the vault and expenses for it's installation in
a central location under spotlights can be secured
with relative ease from any of a multitude of sources. The total of such
installation expenses is anticipated to be in the $1,500 - $4,000 range. Once the Archive
Project is over 9 years old the expenses for postage and contacts with alumni
will probably triple the annual expenses. Considering the current
expenses faced in education, and the returns anticipated with the
Middle School Archive Project, these expenses are minimal. All that is needed is a
volunteer, or team of volunteers, to create and manage an Archive Project in any middle school.
These volunteers need to be people interested in helping students to focus
on their futures.

Challenge a middle school, or a middle school teacher you may know, with a donation to help start their
Archive Project! For example, as little as a pleasant invitation may get
school staff interested in studying the idea to help their students. As little
as $500 would cover initial expenses if you find a donor willing help with half
the cost of the vault. A $10,000 donation to a middle school
can start an Archive Project and cover the expenses for installation of the vault,
and other
expenses related to the photographs and letter writing until the first 10-year
reunion! In the process the lives of thousands of students during
those years will be touched as they plan for their futures and their 10-year
reunions. It is something not now happening. The school
culture will change over time.

Print out a
copy of this web page and take it along with your check to the school you
would like to help change. It will make a difference only if the school you select is
ready to start an Archive Project. Or you could make the offer to several schools
with the understanding that the one with the best plan will be selected. Many
alternatives are possible to get Archive Projects started and help our students
focus on and work for their own futures.

In Dallas ISD there are 35 middle schools without Archive
Projects as of 2-23-09. The offer of $1,000 will more than cover the cost of a
vault. Annual expenses are much less than $2 per 8th grade student. That
is certainly
less expensive, and more effective, than other dropout
prevention programs.

Challenge a school to start an Archive Project with
this year's students!

If we as adults show enough
respect for students and the content of their letters to place these letters in a fire-proof vault for
10 years, a vault that students will see in a place of respect every day, and
if students know they will be asked to share what they have learned with future
students when they return, then our "body language"
will give a set of strong messages to all students:

Their futures are VERY
important and this project is theirs.

Nobody else reads their letters as nobody
controls their futures more than they themselves do.

They
are the real final judges.

What they do will make a
difference.

They can make the
"10 years of wisdom talks" a priceless middle school
tradition.

A report completed in May 2009, linked here,
and
reported in Dallas media, shows the progress
Dallas ISD is making in raising the 9th to 12th grade promotion rates. They have
gone up 8 percentage points since 1999. The 9 Oak Cliff high schools
have had four years of constant improvement with a greater percentage of their 9th grade students
making it to enroll in the 12th grade each year. With the class of 2009
the Oak Cliff high schools now have a 51.3% promotion rate, 11 percentage
points higher than the 39.6% promotion rate the 6 North Dallas high schools
have fallen to.

To understand dropout rates a
compilation of a 12-year history of student enrollment by grade in Dallas ISD,
with number of diplomas given each yearwas created. It gives various
ways of calculating student dropout rates using data that should easily be
available from every school district. While this report was rather easy to compile from
available data on the TEA website, and appears to give a very good idea of the
dropout issue in DISD, similar reports cannot be located online for any
district in the US. Student enrollment numbers by grade have not been
located online for any US school district.

What do the students think of the Archive Project and their graduation
plans?
In May 2007 a 15 question survey was filled out by 400 students before
and after the archive letter writing process. The goal was to secure
measurements of the effect of the archive letter writing process as well as
general perceptions of the Archive Project. Here are the
results from this
first formal survey of students involved in the Archive Project.

The new book, published February 2006, by Dr.
Carol S. Dweck of Stanford,"Mindset: A new Psychology of Success," may have the most profound impact on the Archive Project.
If the Middle School Archive Project can be another force in helping ALL
teachers and students move toward obtaining the "growth mindset" described in
Dr. Dweck's masterpiece, then the world of education will begin a sustained
revolution.

Dr. Robert Coles in his 1989 book
"The Call of Stories : Teaching and the Moral Imagination" provides powerful support for the value of having students write their
stories. A professor who taught under Dr. Coles at Harvard spoke of the
lessons in this book after he was told of the Middle School Archives Project
the summer of 2006. This book has profound potential applications within
the Archive Project.

February 26, 2006, an article "Letters to be delivered in a decade," by
freelance writer, Richard Gonzalez, was published in the Sunday
Fort Worth Star Telegram. Here is
a scanned copy of that article. He wrote: "They write letters as boys and girls to read as men and women."

A handout called "Helping our Children," has
been writtento use in orienting parents, staff, and others
to the School Archive Project. Here are pdf copies that can be
printed as one page,Spanish on one side,
English on the other.
To make modification of this form easier
here are copies of these same two pages in Microsoft Word format: Spanish and
English.

A one
page handout, front and back, that can
be used to present the School Archive
Project idea at your school.

You may freely use the ideas and materiel on this web site. It is
only asked that you
share your results, and any positive changes you may make to
the project design, so that more students may benefit. Your comments and/or questions about the
School Archive Project are valuable.
Please email them to bbetzen@aol.com.

This web site is not managed by Dallas ISD or any school within
Dallas ISD. It is the web project of one Dallas ISD teacher, with the critical
help of many other teachers & colleagues. The goal is for
DISD to
achieve a 50% graduation rate for the first time in over 12 years (possibly the first time in
history) and then to
move toward a 60% graduation rate. In
August of 2008 New York City claimed for the first time that they had
achieved a 50% graduation rate. All indications are that the School Archive
Project will help achieve this goal in Dallas, and then move the graduation rate
in Dallas ISD beyond that of New York City.

The project will spread more quickly as
increasing numbers of schools begin their
own Archive Projects, both within and outside Dallas
ISD. One donor willing to donate to any school that starts an Archive
Project could speed up the process significantly. One donor could help
thousands of children begin the process of thinking of, and recording, their own
history. The goals children will create and work toward will be
priceless! In the process they will graduate high school!

A challenge donation of $5,000, to be given after an Archive
Project is started in a school and the Archive installed, can help an Archive
Project process get started. It would cover the Archive Project expenses for the
first decade in most schools. The process of focusing students onto their own
futures will thereby be made more real and credible for hundreds more students
each year in each school. For every Archive
Project started, dozens, maybe hundreds, of more students will graduate each
year from that time forward.

"What better books can there be than the book of humanity?" Cesar
Chavez